THE NEW YORKER corner, "ask" us to do things (e.g., vote for them). But until this night I'd never heard a politician say "please." The Green ended his speech, "Please, for the first time in your lives you have the chance to vote Green," and was rewarded with sympathetic applause. The Liberal Democrat, Dr. Wrede, is a tall, good-looking gynecologist, able to project to the back of the hall without a microphone. You might well trust him with your uterus, but trusting him with your vote was more compli- cated. His set ten -min ute speech was clear, ardent, and transparently well intentioned. But he made you realize that voting for the Liberal Democrats would be rather like deliberately choos- ing a night of amateur theatricals when you already had tickets for the West End. What he had going for him was the glow of political innocence, to which voters genuinely respond, though it would be a mistake to think of the Liberals more generally as innocent. ] ust as a two-party domination of power over many decades can make both parties cynical and manipulative, so a decades-long exclusion from power can equally affect the soul. A party with a small number of seats (no matter how many supporters) cannot go on indefi- nitely offering itself up as the last, best hope for the country. And so Dr. Wrede zealously put the case for pro- portiona] representation, and spoke warmly of S.T.V., which some thought a television company and others a new disease of the gonads until he ex- plained it as the Single Transferable Vote. Proportional representation is, it seems, the salvation of the country; and the fact that it would also be the sal- vation of the Liberal Demo- crats as a party is merely a happy coincidence. The re- cession is so deep, Dr . Wrede argued, the crisis in govern- ment so acute, that it can be solved only by "a stable re- lationship between two parties," which, in turn, depends upon the stronger party's agreeing to electoral reform. It is, admittedly, a ballsy approach: things are so bad in our country that you should give the balance of power for the foreseeable future to a party that hasn't held office for more than seventy years, and whose last experience of coalition, the Lib-Lab pact of 1977, resulted in its being outmaneuvered by the larger party and ending up with nothing for something. 83 At one point, Dr. Wrede, seeking to explain rather ponderously the advan- tages of P.R., pointed out, "There are ten people in the front row of this hall. It's as if these four could outvote these six, whereas under P.R. these six or seven could outvote these three or four." Oliver Letwin could not help observing, "It's strange how in every one of the meetings we've had there are always ten people in the front row." Letwin was the most profes- sional politician on show in the hall, the one who spoke fluently of macro- economics and used ugly words like "incentify" -factors that probably worked both for and against him. A dapper, quick-witted, and far from predictable Tory, he was also the only contender on the platform to suffer heckling, much of it vigorous and some of it sequential. Letwin: "Con- servatives believe in the transfer of power to the people." Heckler One: "Which people?" Heckler Two: "The Rothschilds." His views on housing were interrupted by loud cries of "Cardboard boxes!" But his technique under fire was impressive. There was the direct approach: "In housing, and this is where you'd better not barrack me, because what I'm going to say will probably become Labour Party policy as well. . ." But there was also the more effective feint-and-hit-back method: "W e do bear some of the responsibility for the recession." Heck- lers One to Ten: "All of it, all of it." Letwin then admits what he reck- ons the extent of the responsibility to have been: that of reflating too much in 1987 . Labour, he points out, at that time wanted to reflate much more. While the others speak, Glenda Jackson sits with al- most alarming stillness, per- haps a relaxation technique learned in the theatre. No anxious sh uming around, no couldn't-disagree-more scrib- bling on a pad in front of her. Asked earlier in the campaign by the Wall Street Journal why she didn't wear makeup, she replied, "It would be a great disappointment for people if they could no longer say I looked as if I was dressed by Oxfam. I would hate to disappoint people." But tonight she is not dressed by Oxfam, and looks neat and crisp in black jacket, white collar, gray skirt, and black stockings. 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